CHRONICLE

Yet more changes

1999, when Doris Dörrie returned to Hof with ERLEUCHTUNG GARANTIERT (ENLIGHTENMENT GUARANTEED), turned into a year of ‘small enlightenments’: TUVALU and NACHTTANKE (‘Nighttime at a petrolstation’), FREMDE FREUNDIN (UNKNOWN FRIEND) and the macabre comedy DREI CHINESEN MIT DEM KONTRABASS (THREE CHINAMEN WITH A DOUBLE-BASS). The program was more extensive than ever and now screened in six venues thanks to the addition of the Scala, the largest cinema in Hof and the site of the second festival. And the expansion continued with the Classic in 2000 and the dapper 60-seater Club, both belonging to the Central in Altstadt.

In 2000, the festival looked ahead to the cinema’s future: three films were shown via a digital projector that the manufacturer normally rented out for 10,000 Mark a day but loaned to the festival free of charge. In the following years, the number of digital projections increased at first gradually, then at an ever growing pace until, in 2013, the festival announced that the last film roll had just made its appearance – in a retrospective. The times of the analog film were over.